Changes to ADFS in Windows Server 2016

With the release of Windows Server 2016, as with earlier releases of ADFS, Microsoft has made significant updates to the functionality and capabilities available with ADFS.

Previously, with the release of Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft released support for OAuth as well as several other features in ADFS 3.0.  Now, with the release of Windows Server 2016, the list of new features continues to grow.

One of the major updates to this release of ADFS has to deal with customizing the sign-in/authentication process.  ADFS 3.0 allowed some basic customization of the login/sign-in screen, but with ADFS in Windows Server 2016, the administrators are given nearly full-control of customizing this screen.

You can read about the changes and new features of ADFS in Windows Server 2016 here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-docs/identity/ad-fs/overview/whats-new-active-directory-federation-services-windows-server-2016

Setting ACLs on Website directories using PowerShell

One of the extremely common tasks I have to perform whenever I set up a website or virtual directory/application in IIS is that I have to also set up folder/directory permissions on the newly created directory as well.

This can be time consuming and error prone, especially if you have to set up numerous directories either on a single web server or multiple web servers.

That is why I heavily rely on PowerShell to help me accomplish this task!

For a primer on just how to accomplish this using PowerShell, you can check out this article: http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/powershell-manage-file-system-acl,2-837.html

Of course, my needs are targeted towards IIS website directories in particular, so I have modified the original script to suit my needs.

You can check out my version of the PowerShell script:

Set up Docker containers on Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016

If you want to get started using Docker for either Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016, you can follow these quick start guides on how to set up Docker containers for each of these respective platforms:

Windows Containers on Windows 10
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick_start/quick_start_windows_10

Windows Containers on Windows Serverhttps://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/quick_start/quick_start_windows_server

Upgrading to Windows Server 2016

Now that Windows Server 2016 has gone RTM, I thought I would try to see if I can upgrade my existing Windows Server 2012 R2 systems to Windows Server 2016.

As part of the upgrade process, I had to uninstall "VMWare Tools" and "Mcafee VirusScan Enterprise 8.8i" before proceeding with the upgrade as you will see in the screenshots below:

After completing the upgrade, I had to re-install VMWare Tools (since I uninstalled them earlier), but other than that, all of my applications seemed to working fine and intact!  Piece of cake!!

Windows Server 2016 RTM Released!

In case you haven't already heard the news, Windows Server 2016 was released!

Even though you cannot yet download it from MSDN, you can download a 180-day evaluation version from here and try it out for yourself: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2016

Pinging an IPv4 Network Address

Now that most Windows machines have IPv6 installed by default, I have noticed that when you do a ping of a machine, you will get the IPv6 address instead of the IPv4 address!!

Well, I still prefer reading and remembering the IPv4 addresses, so I wanted to find out how to get the IPv4 address instead when I performed a ping.

Thankfully, it was rather easy to accomplish as follows:

ping MYSERVER -4

That was all that was needed to return the IPv4 address!

If I still want to get the IPv6 address, I can get it by just changing the command to this instead:

ping MYSERVER -6

How simple is that??

Web Platform Installer and IIS Recommended Configuration

I was recently trying to install "IIS Recommended Configuration" on Windows Server 2016 only to discover that this no longer works!

Instead, I get the following error message:

Therefore, unfortunately, you have to manually configure IIS 10.0 on your Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 systems until Microsoft fixes their Web Platform Installer configurations!

Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5 Released!

You can now download Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5 from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-technical-preview?CR_CC=200630684

You can read more about what's new in Technical Preview 5 here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn765472(v=ws.12).aspx

This app can't be activated by the Built-In Administrator

I recently started playing around with Windows Server 2016 to begin familiarizing myself with the platform when I suddenly encountered this error message:

I had never seen this error message before, but figured it might be caused by User Account Control so I proceed to the UAC settings to turn off UAC:

However, even after changing these UAC settings, I encountered yet another related error message:

Well, this seemed to indicate a much more involved solution, so a quick search on the Internet returned this article:

UAC Group Policy Settings and Registry Key Settings

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd835564%28v=ws.10%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

Of course, since I absolutely LOVE PowerShell, I decided to write a script that would solve this issue for me!

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System" -Name FilterAdministratorToken -Value 1

That was all that was necessary to get my system working as expected!!  Pretty simple, huh??

Why I still hate the Windows 10 Start Menu

With the release of Windows 10 and the re-introduction of the Windows 10 Start Menu, I was thinking I might be able to get used to the new Windows 10 Start Menu, but, unfortunately, I was VERY VERY WRONG!

Windows 10 provides a new "Search Web and Windows" Search icon or Search bar (depending on your settings/preferences).

However, even after installing an application such as "Microsoft Web Platform Installer" and attempting to search my machine for this application, these are the results of my findings:

As you can see from the screenshot above, Windows 10 is not finding the application that I have installed on the machine.  Instead, it is attempting to search the Web for this application!

 However, if I simply jump into the "All apps" section, I can quite readily find the installed application as shown below:

In contrast, if I use Classic Shell (http://classicshell.net/) to search Windows 10, the search results are remarkably different:

As you can see from the screenshot above, the results are accurately discovering the installed application on Windows 10 rather than attempting to search the Web for this application.

Therefore, as you can probably guess by now, I am sticking with using Classic Shell for the foreseeable future!!

Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4 First Look

After a great deal of disappointment with the earlier releases of Windows Server 2016, I finally decided to install Technical Preview 4 to see if it differed from prior releases of Windows Server 2016.

As I had read earlier, based on customer feedback, it seemed that Microsoft re-introduced the Desktop Experience to the Windows Server platform, so I was expecting to see something similar to the Windows 10 User Interface.

Aside from the Windows 10 Start Menu, the overall server looks pretty much the same as Windows Server 2012/Windows Server 2012 R2!!

Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 2

With the release of Technical Preview 2 for Windows Server 2016, I was expecting for only slight changes from the earlier release, but boy was I wrong!

The new installation only includes 2 options for a standard installation as well as an installation with Local Admin Tools.

As you can guess, I installed the option for "Local Admin Tools" and only ended up with Server Manager as my only GUI interface!

Yup!! Absolutely no Start menu or any other features for managing the Server.

While this may spell good news for some server administrators, it spells extremely bad news for developers such as myself that frequently develop on Windows Server directly to be able to test out and develop my applications (especially SharePoint).

I am not sure what this change means for SharePoint developers around the world, but I am definitely going to make my voice heard and complain about this change to the Windows Server 2016 platform.

If you agree that the GUI option should remain, you can vote on this UserVoice item here: https://windows.uservoice.com/forums/265757-windows-feature-suggestions/suggestions/7923741-bring-back-gui-option-for-windows-server-2016

Windows Server 2016 First Look

If you have not yet installed Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview, it is very similar to Windows 10 with some minor changes.

The Start Menu looks very similar to Windows 10, however, it has Program Groupings similar to Windows 7 style:

The Server Manager looks pretty much exactly the same as in Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2:

One of the new and exciting features is the new Task View icon:

Clicking on this icon in the Taskbar brings up this dialog window:

Clicking on the "Add a desktop" option allows you to add multiple Desktops!!!

That is pretty much all the differences I have found in Windows Server 2016 thus far.  As I discover new features I will continue posting updates to my blog.  Stay tuned for more!!